Page 78 of Seven Oars
The Striker would kill her swiftly.
“Weird eyes. Funny being.” Massar’s clawed finger traced her throat.“You have a heartbeat. How many hearts?”
“One,” she whispered.
The flight instinct was so strong that her legs twitched.But on a space station, there was nowhere to run that Massar couldn’t follow.
“Puny. Skin so thin I can see blood flow in your veins. Your blood is so bright. I’ve seen it, between your legs. Are you still bleeding down there?”
He slowly slid his knife between Rosamma’s legs, pressing the flat of the blade against her mound.
Rosamma couldn’t even swallow, petrified by what he might do next. His black-hole eyes gleamed with unnatural excitement.
A flap to another sleeping node was yanked open, and another pirate emerged, Keerym, the Tarai alien.He stopped in his tracks at the sight of her.
“What’s this sickly cunt doing here?” he asked Massar.
Massar removed the knife.“It’s none of your business.”
“I fucking sleep here. Why’d you bring her in?”
“I didn’t. She came on her own.”
Keerym turned to Rosamma, his light-green, pupil-less eyes more eerie than Rix’s oversized black ones.“What do you want?”
Rosamma managed to swallow, moistening her dry throat.
“I came looking for a disinfectant. For my friend Eze. Tutti said to look here.”
Keerym’s ears twitched like a cat’s.
“The fuck Tutti is blabbering to you… Disinfectant? Tell it it knows shit. Dumb machine. Thilza binged all that junk a long time ago. He then popped every pill he could find and felt pretty pain-free for months.” Keerym smiled a mean smile.“Your friend Eze can keep hurting.”
Massar got tired of being ignored.“You’re in my business, Tarai. Go away, or I’ll cut off your balls one at a time.”
Keerym peered down at the blade Massar was waving in front of his crotch.“Shove your pruning shears up your backside.”
Massar made a stabbing motion. Keerym parried with a blade of his own that he produced out of nowhere.
Rosamma didn’t delay and backed out of the Crew Quarters, fleeing.
Almost immediately, she heard footsteps behind her in the passageway.
She quickened her pace, heading for the familiar confines of the Cargo Hold, with its perceived safety in the presence of the women. But it was a dead end, like any other room she might try to retreat into.No place was safe, no corner a hideout.
The footsteps that followed her were light, yet her every heartbeat echoed them.
Panic swamped her in the way panic does, debilitating and clouding her reason. Stifling sobs, she flew to the Bridge, her destination the Meat Locker. She’d hide behind the Tana-Tana’s corpse. He’d save her.It.Was a headless, skinned corpse gendered?
She was losing it.
She stalled at the door, wasting precious seconds. If there was any other escape outlet, a gate to Hell, maybe, she’d jump in without reservations, because the Meat Locker, with its single un-living inhabitant, gave her a terminal level of creeps.
Then she saw it: a narrow door, blending into the wall.
She didn’t stop to think what horrors might hide behind its accordion construction. Nothing could top the Meat Locker.
Slipping in, she quickly pulled the door closed, praying the pirate didn’t see the movement.
